Pure

Did you know there was a cemetery in the heart of Paris - it was the oldest and largest - so overcrowded that there wasn't enough earth left to allow bodies to decompose properly? I didn't, until I picked up Pure by Andrew Miller.

The cemetery, Saints Innocents or Les Innocents as it's called in the book, is no longer there: in its place is a fountain Fontaine des Innocents on the Rue St Denis in the Les Halles district. The bones are now in Paris's Catacombs.

From the Middle Ages until the late 18th century, the ground and its charnel houses had swallowed up almost two million people, many buried in mass graves, until it could take no more. The cemetery and surrounding area were so unsanitary, even by mid-1700s standards, and the already intolerable situation made signicantly worse by a prolonged period of heavy rain, that Louis XVI ordered it destroyed. Every body and every bone was to be dug up and moved. The cemetery and church was to be no more.

Pure is a fictionalised version of this event told from the viewpoint of the young engineer, with no more experience than having built a small bridge in Normandy, who was given the task.

I haven't finished it yet, but so far it's the best type of book: a literary page turner. Andrew Miller is beautiful writer, and he's just won a major prize in the UK for the book. If I'm still enthralled by the end, I'll be straight on to the library to reserve everything he's ever written.

The Husband, who read it first, also loved it and he'd normally resist anything that could even be vaguely labelled as historical fiction with a barge pole. But he was desperate for a book and I was in the middle of something else. Now he keeps asking me what Jean-Baptiste is up to every time he sees my nose in the book.

Last night we looked up the exact location of Saints Innocents, now the Place Joachim-du-Bellay, on Google Maps and found the site was literally around the corner from the apartment we stayed in when in Paris the year before last. If only we'd known then, but Paris has so many secrets and stories.

Not far from the Pompidou Centre, which I never got around to either. Clearly, I need to go back.

Red mist

My tomato growing days are over. The Grosse Lisse was floury. Ditto for Mama's Delight. Still waiting on the Tommy Toe and Black Russian to ripen, but don't have high hopes. Even worse than the texture, though, is the battle of the fruit fly. Too disheartening to go through all that planting and watering to discover motley little holes throughout the crop and the creator of the holes having a little rest of the biggest tomato after all its hard work. I shake my first at its awful twitchy little wings but it just sits there. Not worth getting angry over. I give up.

Next year, I will just buy tomatoes from the farmers' markets at the height of summer when they're juicy, perfect and cheap. Which is what I've been making my daily Greek salad lunches from. To me, a Greek salad is like summer in a bowl, and as there are only a few days of summer left, I raise my glass to it. At least the cucumbers were ours.

The only variety to have worked so far is the Tomato Berry, but I'm not sure all that water and garden space can be justified on two handfuls of cherry tomatoes - so goodbye to those too. If I adapted the cost-per-wear fashion equation for these I may be looking at the Louis Vuitton of tomatoes.

For anyone who'd like some tomato-growing tips from someone who knows what they're doing - clearly not me - The Mother-in-Law's pal Mildred who's a champion grower says tomatoes like a bit of milk. Who knew? Mildred fills an almost empty 2-litre milk container with water and uses that on the soil. Also likes to grind up egg shells and toss ground coffee about.

Suspect my troubles had more to do with lack of sun than the tomatoes' desire for an omelette with a latte on the side, but heartfelf thanks to Mildred. I think it's fair to say I need all the help I can get.

Dove sanctuary

I seem to have unwittingly created a dove sanctuary. Everywhere I look, there's a dove in our garden.

What started as feeding two breeding doves whose eggs kept being stolen by currawongs, has turned into my own flock.

On our teeny tiny patch of grass this morning, I counted 12 breakfasting - three quarters of them babies.

Some sit in our tree afterward, others just loll about on the grass.

They don't bother the native birds, even the two willie wagtails who seem to spend most of the day in the same tree don't tell them off - and they're birds who like to give everything a telling off with their telltale shaking-maracca sound, which means they're annoyed.

One landed in front of The Cat, who was sitting around doing nothing, a couple of weeks ago and gave her a beakful. The Cat looked at the bird with a "what-the-hell" expression but didn't move towards it. So the willie wagtail walked straight up to The Cat's face and let loose again. Luckily for the wagtail, The Cat was a mild beast.

While I'm not encouraging any more doves into the garden, I have to admit that I find the cooing, their weird dovey dancing and the proximity of their general animalness comforting. When a pet dies, the house feels quiet. Thanks to the menagerie of birds in the garden, though, I'm assured of at least one, if not 12, pairs of beady eyes that register my presence whenever I walk outside.

End of an era

There's a cat-shaped hole in our hearts tonight.

Sweet dreams, little friend.

Chain reaction

No-one but me has been allowed to sit at the dining room table since yesterday afternoon. I camped here determined to crack a new-to-me chevron pattern as I really didn't want to make another ripple blanket.

So I sat. I translated Michelle's pattern into a diagram. I tested it out. I finally got it.

I now have two completed rows on the blanket, which means easy-peasy crochet-with-your-eyes-closed plain sailing from here on in.

For anyone attempting something like this for the first time, take heart that it's the first row where you crochet into the foundation chain that's the nightmare. When working on something that's more than 200 stitches (I'm not keen on little knee rugs - but that may change when I'm old enough to require a knee rug - so I tend to make them all wider) it's almost impossible not to go wrong somewhere, particularly as you have to manipulate the hook into each chain a certain way, making the links distortingly confusing, to ensure a smooth edge.

So I learnt to fudge it - as everything becomes clear on the second row and I made up for any mistakes there - not easy for a retentive personality like me. I feel cleansed.

No more posts on this project till it's finished (or, at the very least, more interesting to look at). Promise.

ps. Here's a great pic that demonstrates exactly where to put the hook when working into a foundation chain.

Crochet rage

When The Child saw these tweely named egg cosies, she stared. She was silent. She asked why eggs would need hats. She had a good point, I thought. This was the little project I mentioned last week. I didn't make them because I wanted any egg hats, just had the urge to crochet and wanted to try something new, and small.

Upside is I used 0.001 per cent of my wool stash - and we have egg hats - which could also be a downside...

What I cropped out of the top photo is the actual, proper crochet project that I posted about last Friday. Couldn't work out the chevron I wanted to make, as it wasn't a complete pattern, or the one I linked to as I don't understand how you can have a floating number of chains to begin with and I don't know how to get rid of any leftovers as suggested.

So I resorted to the ripple-blanket pattern that I've worked successfully from before. Thought I was clever enough to make it bigger than the pattern's 216+3 first chain row by adding the suggested multiples of 12+3 stitches. But either my maths was out or I mis-stitched somewhere as after two attempts, taking several hours each, I'm no further ahead. 216+12+3=231 doesn't it?

I need to go away and check my maths AGAIN - and translate the whole thing to a diagram so I can see what I'm doing wrong.

If the next attempt doesn't work, I'll either cry or begin the first of 25,000 egg hats.

Both patterns from the excellent book Vintage Crochet by Susan Cropper.

Blanket statement

I was at Morris and Sons yesterday sourcing some product for a freelance job. I promised myself that's all I would do and would not buy a single thing for myself. So I bought seven things instead (eight if you could a new crochet needle, which I don't). I love this merino wool. I used it to make a blanket for The Child, who loves to wrap it around her as it's so soft against the skin. Not cheap, but totally worth it.

Reason being I felt the urge for a big crochet project again. The sort of simple, medatative project that I can get lost in and not think too much about. I was thinking blanket.

First started getting twitchy fingers last weekend so ended up looking for projects that would eat into my wool stash. Found a quick one, which I'll reveal at a later date that both The Child and Husband thought hilarious, but it just didn't hit the spot. I wanted something I would love, not just get on with.

What I found was this 1939 painting, Train Landscape, by Eric Ravilious as published in Jane Brocket's book The Gentle Art of Domesticity. The colours were perfect, and I used it as inspiration for the palette of my now-in-progress chevron eyelet striped blanket.

Should be finished just in time for next summer.

Have a lovely weekend. x

ps. have started a pattern but if I don't like the look after a few rows, I may change to this one.